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Maestro comes bundled with ABC Player. Use ABC Player to listen to .abc files that you or others have created. While Maestro does include a built-in ABC preview, using ABC Player is easier if you just want to listen to songs.

Download - Visit the Maestro project page to learn more and download the installer.

Use this thread for questions, comments, and help with any problems you have with the program.

This looks great! Even though I edit midis to get them into range in another program before running them through a converter, I'm a bit of a visual person, so with these added features above the MIDI player I really look forward to using it! Thanks Digero

[URL=http://w11.zetaboards.com/No_Whole_Bard/index/][IMG]http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/avalonmists3/No%20Whole%20Bard/Lass_sig2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[color=#58732A]~The wind is full of a thousand voices~[/color]

The converter reads (and converts) the dynamics of the midi file as well, which I had dearly hoped for, so yay! Is there a way to boost/reduce the dynamics for individual tracks from within Maestro, though, if you want to increase or lower the volume for certain instruments?

Is there a way to manually reorder the parts list from within Maestro? (for instance, if I don't want all flute tracks together, but have one way down in the list). I can of course do so via cut+paste in Notepad, but in-house editing would be lovely.

I suppose hoping for a functionality where you can mark some notes you want to exclude from the conversion would be too much? That'll take yer well into midi editor territory, I suppose *smiles*

But this is grand stuff indeed! Thank yer for the already excellent work!

I was going to ask much the same as Linawillow actually, and also make comment about the surprise of having the dynamics in the ABC.
I have only tried one song (sans drums, so can't comment on that function as yet, though what I saw looked like it should do quite well), which I am currently working on (putting dynamics in) that I had put through the MIDI Player to convert to ABC and was really happy at having the header information done for me after I input the information once. I had forgotten that I had decided to change one of my tracks from flute to clarinet, and although I could have changed just the X number and instrument name myself in the ABC file, I tried deleting the flute part to redo it for clarinet. Except both flute parts I had got deleted, and then after redoing the first flute part again it ended up an octave too low, but that may all have been because I was rushing and not paying attention to what I was doing with the new features.

Also need to make mention of the inclusion of the bar and timestamp indication in the ABC file, love it.

I am well impressed with the changes you've made to your converter Digero, so much so I will probably go back to Melody Assistant to change the dynamics how I want them with this song I'm currently working on rather than keep going through the ABC file. There's lots of dynamic nuances, and it will be so much easier for me (as a visual person) to do it where I can see it goes on the staff rather than in amongst a bunch of letters and numbers Although I know how to adjust dynamics in each track in Melody Assistant, it's not something I've done much with the midis in the past, but will be investigating and altering them more now!

[URL=http://w11.zetaboards.com/No_Whole_Bard/index/][IMG]http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/avalonmists3/No%20Whole%20Bard/Lass_sig2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[color=#58732A]~The wind is full of a thousand voices~[/color]

Great job! I love the new tool.
I'd feared you had stopped working on this one, when Firefern's converter came to life - so glad you didn't, I'll choose a stand alone tool over an online one anytime.

I was a little confused at first with the display of the notes being out of range 'til I figured it out.
I especially like the drum conversion part. Do you think you could support a 1:n-mapping in a future version, so as to replace one midi drum with more than one lotro drums to better mimic certain sounds?
Also, like Linawillow, I think it would be great to be able to affect the way dynamics are handled.

But as it is now, it's already a terrific tool, with all the little thingies I was missing in your midi-player and more.
Thank you!

The converter reads (and converts) the dynamics of the midi file as well, which I had dearly hoped for, so yay! Is there a way to boost/reduce the dynamics for individual tracks from within Maestro, though, if you want to increase or lower the volume for certain instruments?

I might be able to add that eventually: actually altering the volume per-track is easy, the hard part is writing UI for you to be able to configure it . In the meantime, editing the MIDI beforehand is your best bet: change the channel volume on the particular tracks you want to edit. I also created a little javascript-based ABC Volume editor that you can use to increase or decrease the volume in a block of ABC text: http://lotro.acasylum.com/abc/abcvolume.html.

Originally Posted by Linawillow

Is there a way to manually reorder the parts list from within Maestro? (for instance, if I don't want all flute tracks together, but have one way down in the list). I can of course do so via cut+paste in Notepad, but in-house editing would be lovely.

Not directly: Maestro always groups parts together if they have the same base part number in the ABC Part Numbering options. Though if you want more control, you can disable automatic part numbering, and then it'll sort by part number. To disable automatic part numbering, click the gear icon next to the part number, then set all instruments to "1", and the increment dropdown to "1".

Originally Posted by Linawillow

I suppose hoping for a functionality where you can mark some notes you want to exclude from the conversion would be too much? That'll take yer well into midi editor territory, I suppose *smiles*

Yeah that's straying into MIDI editor territory, which I explicitly avoided because it makes everything more complicated. For example, it would be very time consuming to write a UI to select note(s) in the song. It may be simpler to add something like, for example: "Don't play notes above D3", or "Don't play notes after 1m 32s", but don't hold your breath.

I was going to ask much the same as Linawillow actually, and also make comment about the surprise of having the dynamics in the ABC.
I have only tried one song (sans drums, so can't comment on that function as yet, though what I saw looked like it should do quite well), which I am currently working on (putting dynamics in) that I had put through the MIDI Player to convert to ABC and was really happy at having the header information done for me after I input the information once. I had forgotten that I had decided to change one of my tracks from flute to clarinet, and although I could have changed just the X number and instrument name myself in the ABC file, I tried deleting the flute part to redo it for clarinet. Except both flute parts I had got deleted, and then after redoing the first flute part again it ended up an octave too low, but that may all have been because I was rushing and not paying attention to what I was doing with the new features.

One thing that may not be obvious at first is that Maestro takes into account the different pitch ranges of LOTRO's instruments. The Flute and Pibgorn are +2 octaves, the Clarinet and Bagpipes are +1 octave, and the Theorbo is -1 octave. When you change instruments, Maestro automatically transposes all of the tracks for the given instrument (i.e. transposes Flute tracks down by 2 octaves to get them into the Flute's range). You can always override this by transposing the tracks yourself. Also, if you want to fix the ABC file you already made, just open the ABC in Maestro and adjust the transpose for the flute part.

Originally Posted by AvalonMists

Also need to make mention of the inclusion of the bar and timestamp indication in the ABC file, love it.

I am well impressed with the changes you've made to your converter Digero, so much so I will probably go back to Melody Assistant to change the dynamics how I want them with this song I'm currently working on rather than keep going through the ABC file. There's lots of dynamic nuances, and it will be so much easier for me (as a visual person) to do it where I can see it goes on the staff rather than in amongst a bunch of letters and numbers Although I know how to adjust dynamics in each track in Melody Assistant, it's not something I've done much with the midis in the past, but will be investigating and altering them more now!

In case it helps: Maestro looks for both the "velocity" of each individual note as well as the channel volume. I haven't used Melody Assistant myself, so I'm not sure which of those is easier to change.

Great job! I love the new tool.
I'd feared you had stopped working on this one, when Firefern's converter came to life - so glad you didn't, I'll choose a stand alone tool over an online one anytime.

I was a little confused at first with the display of the notes being out of range 'til I figured it out.
I especially like the drum conversion part. Do you think you could support a 1:n-mapping in a future version, so as to replace one midi drum with more than one lotro drums to better mimic certain sounds?
Also, like Linawillow, I think it would be great to be able to affect the way dynamics are handled.

But as it is now, it's already a terrific tool, with all the little thingies I was missing in your midi-player and more.
Thank you!

Indeed, I teased Maestro a long time ago. It's taken a while to release in part because of a lack of free time to work on it, and in part because I had so many features, UI improvements/cleanup, and bug fixes I wanted to add before I released it.

One option you have for doing a 1:n mapping of drums is to make multiple Drum parts. The second drum part will have the additional drum sounds that you want for each note. Export the ABC then reopen it in Maestro and combine all of the drum parts into a single part. It's a bit of a manual process, but at least it's doable. Use the import/export drum map feature to make it easier to assign the drum sounds to the second part.

I had considered adding the ability to do 1:n mapping of tracks in general, but it didn't seem too useful at first. I do see how it could be useful specifically for drums though, but I'm not sure I'll be able to implement it anytime soon.

And thanks! IMO Maestro is so much better than LOTRO MIDI Player, I cringe when I look at the output ABCs from MIDI Player.

This program is fantastic. The UI is very well thought out and intuitive to use.

I love being able to listen to and play around with the drums in real-time and having the ability to switch between the original midi and the ABC file while it plays.

This is a wonderful gift to the music community. I except we are going to be hearing a lot of new high quality songs in the weeks to come thanks to this new tool.
Great job, thank you so much!

Xandrin Xavier

Glad you like it. One of my goals was to make it much easier to create quality ABC songs than it was with LOTRO MIDI Player, especially multi-part songs.

While I've heard plenty of good ABC songs in-game, I've also heard my share of bad ones I know were created using MIDI Player -- hopefully if people start using Maestro instead of MIDI Player, their music will sound just a bit better.

In case it helps: Maestro looks for both the "velocity" of each individual note as well as the channel volume. I haven't used Melody Assistant myself, so I'm not sure which of those is easier to change.

Yes, I had determined that after doing a bit of a test file. Volume is definitely easier to edit, but then I have only just found out how to edit velocity and haven't done anything with it yet.
I don't suppose you could shed any light on what parameters of velocity and volume Maestro uses to determine each of the LOTRo dynamics? I am working on sorting it out myself, and have made some discoveries already, but you know, any bit of info would be helpful

[URL=http://w11.zetaboards.com/No_Whole_Bard/index/][IMG]http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/avalonmists3/No%20Whole%20Bard/Lass_sig2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[color=#58732A]~The wind is full of a thousand voices~[/color]

Thanks so much for the information, it's just what I was hoping for.
I had discovered a 0 would result in a rest, although using that formula and table you've provided would indicate I should have different results to what have shown up in my song file, as well as the test file I've been using to experiment with velocity and volume. I wasn't able to get anything above +mf+ in my testing so far, though there is +ff+ in the song file. About the only difference I can see between how I was testing velocity and the song file is one other thing that I can alter when editing the velocity of a note, and that's "pressure time" (a % value). I did some calculations with "pressure time" and the velocity value to see if that was the reason I was getting different results, but ended up with another value that didn't match your table. Anyhow, I shall continue working on it, I have a few other ideas to try

[URL=http://w11.zetaboards.com/No_Whole_Bard/index/][IMG]http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/avalonmists3/No%20Whole%20Bard/Lass_sig2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[color=#58732A]~The wind is full of a thousand voices~[/color]

I just double checked, created a MIDI file with Anvil Studio, and it worked as expected. However, Anvil (and possibly Melody Assistant) lists the velocities in the range 1-100 instead of 1-127, so when you use a note velocity of 100 in the editor, it actually outputs 127 in the MIDI.

If the numbers are scaled to the range of 1-100, then the formula is:
volume = note_velocity * channel_volume / 79
(with the default channel_volume assumed to be 79 out of 100 if it's not specified)

And the table is just the one above multiplied by 100/127:

Code:

pppp 6
ppp 12
pp 25
p 37
mp 50
mf 62
f 75
ff 88
fff 100

Maestro doesn't do anything with "pressure time" - I'm not sure what that is. If it's something specific to Melody Assistant, then it might be using that to alter the note velocity or something.

Also, since LOTRO doesn't have any way of changing the volume of a note while it is played, Maestro only pays attention to the attack velocity of a note and the channel volume at the time the note started. If Melody Assistant is making the notes start quiet and get louder, that won't work well with Maestro.

I use Anvil Studio (free edition) to edit my midi's but I can't figure out how to increase the volume or decrease the volume in a track. (Do I just have to buy Pro-edition?) When I change the volume, it only applies to the playback vol. I found the "Insert midi event-channel volume" and lowered the value, how do you change the "time of event" to apply to the whole track? BTW, an explanation "for dummies" would be appreciated LOL . I have a good ear, but can't read music. In Maestro, the track I lower using the volume/playback control applies to the original option and works, but when I save the .abc file it doesn't. So I'm assuming I have to actually edit the sheet music the abc file is extracting. Can Anvil Studio editing do that?

Yeah, after further testing I think I can determine that the 'pressure time' doesn't play a part, but I still can't fathom how I was getting those results. I could investigate more, but rather than spend more time on trying to work out how it was getting particular dynamics I've just gone with a method that will result in the dynamics I want

I've pretty much just made the channel volume 100, and then make the velocities according to your earlier table, and so far I'm getting desired results (in Melody Assistant the velocities do range from 0 - 127). The song I'm working on isn't long and only has 6 parts, but there is a lot of fluctuations with the dynamics, so it's taking some time to complete (in amongst rl stuff), but after getting about half way through I exported the midi and ran it through Maestro (in part to check that I had the balance of dynamics right across the instruments) and it's going really well so far. So thanks ever so much Digero for this new converter, and the information about the dynamics

EDIT- I did download the free version of Anvil in the past, but never did much with it, so I can't really answer about how to adjust the volume or velocity of notes (and I haven't altered the volume of individual notes, only the velocity as I found that was the best way to get the desired dynamic results in the ABC after putting it through Maestro)

[URL=http://w11.zetaboards.com/No_Whole_Bard/index/][IMG]http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/avalonmists3/No%20Whole%20Bard/Lass_sig2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[color=#58732A]~The wind is full of a thousand voices~[/color]

This is my new preferred converter. Much, much better drum conversions than Firefern's was giving, especially on songs with changing tempos.

I do have one question though:-

Every now and again I will come across a midi that when Maestro converts it, it will combine two instruments from the midi into one track. For example the midi I am currently converting contains 10 instruments/tracks and when Maestro converted it, It rolled 4 tracks into 2 - so now the conversion has 8 tracks.

Sometimes you can work with it, one instrument will play the track just fine without detriment to the song - but other times it is decidedly inconvenient because you may need the parts that were combined to be played on separate instruments to keep the proper melody.

Ingleton I wonder if perhaps you missed clicking on 'new part' when selecting the next instrument you wanted to do, and so ended up with two instruments checked in the right-side panel? That would end up with two instruments merged into one part I would imagine.

I'm going to say a big 'Thank You' again Digero, as now our band can play a song at a proper fast tempo that we hadn't been able to achieve before due to a 'note too short' error. We'd tried a few ideas, but nothing worked until it was put through Maestro, which came up trumps, yay!

One other thing I have discovered is that for clarinet the low C gets transposed up an octave, because technically it's out of range (it would happen for the horn to I guess). That's well and dandy! (except if you deliberately wanted the clarinet 'cough' sound )

[URL=http://w11.zetaboards.com/No_Whole_Bard/index/][IMG]http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c181/avalonmists3/No%20Whole%20Bard/Lass_sig2.png[/IMG][/URL]
[color=#58732A]~The wind is full of a thousand voices~[/color]

No, it has nothing to do with clicking on more then one part. Lotro midi player and sadly, this program as well has a tendency to put tracks together if they share a midi track (or is it channel?). It's not a big problem if the parts can logically be covered by the same instrument. However, sometimes it will merge two tracks that shouldn't go together. One time, it merged a guitar track and a choir ahh tack on me. One of the ways you can fix this is to import the midi into Melody Assistant (probably Anvil as well) and export it back as a midi1. This will cause Lotro Midi Player and Maestro to see them as separate tracks.

Maestro doesn't merge MIDI tracks together when opening the file. However, only type 1 MIDI files contain track information in the file. If the MIDI file is type 0, then everything is in a single track. Maestro attempts to handle type 0 MIDI files by creating a separate track for each channel when you open the file. It's possible that MIDI editors like Anvil do something different when opening type 0 MIDI files (e.g., perhaps if a single channel uses multiple instruments, split it by instrument as well). In any case, I'd recommend using type 1 MIDI files if you have a choice.

If the MIDI *is* type 1 and Maestro is still having problems with it, log a bug ("New issue") and attach the .mid file to the bug.